How does confluence search ranking work?

[frother]

I am interested to know how confluence search ranking works. Cause I feel if I don't get a search result in the "quick search" I don't have a hope in hell in finding it in the full search experience. It seems I am not alone with this feeling (google search pic below)

Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 11.15.44 am.png

Are titles and headings given prominence?

[Steven F Behnke]

Integrating Google Search is a possibility. That would probably be helpful since users are typically used to that format of search engine. 

The main point I need to get across here is that if you aren't tagging your pages appropriately than it will be a PITA to find anything. That's on you and your users. I run our confluence content at my place of business and I tag anything that I know will be difficult to find, since I know how the search works. However, we aren't running crazy queries like some people like to, just basic searches.

[Steven F Behnke]

However, "improving" the built in search is probably out of the scope of a typical development request. I'll troll JIRA in a bit and see if they have any tickets for improvements to the search to link back here.

[frother]

Like the idea of integrating google search!

[Steven F Behnke]

Almost any Atlassian Expert partners should be able to integrate this for you. The process is a little complicated and a fair amount of work but it makes sense in some cases. Find someone local and ask them: https://www.atlassian.com/resources/experts

[Alexa Tolan]

if it's possible to integrate Google search, then please do it! the search tool in Confluence is a critical feature, please do something to improve it, cause currently it works quite bad and the ranking rules don't seem to work properly. I'm using Confl 5.6.6. in an organisation of 800 people, lots of complex content and often difficult to retrieve relevant content via the search tool.

[frother]

Sorry about the attitude, was getting flustered cause I couldn't find what I wanted. Have updated question to be a more constructive.

[Steven F Behnke]

Is there a specific issue or is this just a general purpose attitude?

[Davin Studer]

I wouldn't say it sucks, but there are some definite sore points such as not being able to put the wildcard at the front of the search string.